Sudden amnesia showed me the self is a convenient fiction

A reflection on existentialism, and reshaping your identity after memory loss. What does it feel like to lose your memories, and as consequence, your whole identity? Steven Hales, an author and professor and chair of philosophy at Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania, suffered from transient global amnesia, a rare, one-time diagnosis that wipes out your memories for a given period of time. In this striking article for Psyche magazine, he describes the experience, and what learnings he took from it, particularly when it comes to his own sense of self.